


inhibitions (or, high five)

by spritewrites (giggly__gay)



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: A little bit of angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Marijuana, Platonic Relationships, Recreational Drug Use, Sibling Bonding, Tickling, i wrote this for the title pun and then it got way out of hand, tagged for drug use and language, this is a tickle fic, ticklish!five, ticklish!vanya
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25881265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giggly__gay/pseuds/spritewrites
Summary: “Are you okay?”He sighed, running his small hand through his hair. “Yep. Fine. Great. Just… need to take the edge off.”Everything went still.“Five.”“What,” he snapped. “Are you going to lecture me about the long-term effects of alcohol on my goddamn pre-teen body like everyone else? Because trust me, I’ve calculated exactly the blood alcohol content that –”“No, I – no. I was just going to say…” She swallowed hard, then met his gaze, her kind eyes and his blazing ones. The corner of her lip tugged upward. “I’ve got something that might help.”
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 5
Kudos: 179
Collections: The umbrella academy





	inhibitions (or, high five)

“Ahem.”

_Slam._ “Ow.”

“What are you doing?” Vanya asked, peering around the cabinet door to where Five was cursing and rubbing his head.

“Nothing.”  
  


Vanya raised her eyebrows. “Doesn’t look like nothing.”

“Yeah, well, it’s nothing, okay?” Five snapped, sticking his sore head back in the cabinet.

_Well, that’s bullshit._ “You sure?”

Five huffed. “Let me assure you, I am one hundred percent certain that I am doing absolutely nothing of interest to you right now.”

He briefly pulled his head out (carefully avoiding the top) to see Vanya giving him one of her soft smiles. “Rooting around in the back of a cabinet is pretty interesting to me.”

A long, low exhale. He was eyeing her carefully, the same way he did the first day he came home. Like he didn’t know who to trust. “Fine. Do you happen to know where dear old Dad kept the alcohol?”

The crease between Vanya’s eyes deepened. “We have a whole bar, Five.”

“Yes, yes, I _know,_ but we’re… uh, out. Did the old man have any backup storage?”

“I think he got rid of it all when Klaus started drinking.” She put a gentle hand on Five’s shoulder, startling him. Instantly, the hand was back at her side. Right. The touch thing. “Are you okay?”

He sighed, running his small hand through his hair. “Yep. Fine. Great. Just… need to take the edge off.”

Everything went still.

“Five.”

“ _What,_ ” he snapped. “Are you going to lecture me about the long-term effects of alcohol on my goddamn pre-teen body like everyone else? Because trust me, I’ve calculated exactly the blood alcohol content that –”

“No, I – no. I was just going to say…” She swallowed hard, then met his gaze, her kind eyes and his blazing ones. The corner of her lip tugged upward. “I’ve got something that might help.”

*

Honestly, Vanya never thought that her birthday gift from Klaus would ever be anything more than a joke. “So you don’t blow up the moon again,” he’d said with a wink, “now that you’re off your pills and everything.” But now, sitting on the floor of her childhood bedroom ripping open a package of laced gummies with her 58-year-old brother, she was so, so glad she had it.

The circles under Five’s eyes had gotten worse over the past few weeks, and even though she knew he’d never say anything, it was clear that putting down the staggering weight of the apocalypse after forty-five years of carrying it was proving difficult for her brother. She saw the way he startled at his reflection, the way his fingers flexed absent-mindedly toward his hip, right where a holster might be, the way he counted the people in the room, the way he would talk too quietly or too loudly, or left out details in stories, as if he couldn’t gauge how much of a given conversation was supposed to happen in his head.

He’d taken to drinking, of course – he’d been drinking since he got back. But now he seemed to rarely be without a glass in his hand. And Vanya saw the way his shoulders relaxed when he took a sip, the way his tapping foot and twitching eyelid settled.

Vanya was used to watching. She knew how to see things.

She’d been saving the candy especially for him, for when he needed it. Tomorrow she’d go to the liquor store for him; she knew better than to recommend he go cold-turkey. Five was smart. With the right support, he’d slow down on his own, when he was ready. That was her job, being the right support.

Therapy would probably be good too.

“I don’t like sweets,” he reminded her, and for a second her heart lurched for the thirteen-year-old boy who was once caught with a half-empty can of cake frosting under his bed.

“These’ll help. Just trust me?” It was a request, an olive branch. Slowly, he nodded.

“Okay.”

*

“—It wasn’t even the most dangerous situation I’d been in that _week!_ Dolores was furious at me for _days,_ of course, but at least I got some wine out of it,” Five said, tipping his head back to stare at the popcorn ceiling. Vanya was giggling at his story, watching the faint smile dance over her brother’s face at the memory.

“I thought the apocalypse would be, just like… shitty forever.”

Five sighed. “It was. But you know. You can’t be unhappy for 45 years straight, your body doesn’t work that way. There were good times.”

Vanya giggled again. She couldn’t seem to stop doing that. “I can’t do anything straight.”

For a beat, Five studied her, his expression unreadable. Then he broke into a surprisingly bright smile.

“That was a joke.” It wasn’t a question.

Vanya gave her brother a light shove. The way a sister might to a brother. “Of course it was, idiot.”

He shoved her back, smiling wider than Vanya had seen in a long time. “Don’t call me an idiot. Idiot.” The twitch in his eyebrow was gone. Vanya suddenly went quiet, the light feeling in her core spreading throughout her chest at this realization.

“Five?”

“Hm?”

“I love you a lot.”

Five was quiet too, then, but not unusually so; Five was always quiet, when he wasn’t yelling. His eyes traced patterns in the ridges and dips of the ceiling plaster.

“I love you too.” He turned to look at her. “I missed you.”

“I know, Five,” she replied, because she did. “I missed you too.” Because she does. Did. Does.

His face split again, into that same bright, open smile. “You know what I would think about? Out in the apocalypse?”

“What?”

“When we would stay up all night sometimes talking. Remember that? Jesus, we must’ve been… ten? Eleven? And we’d be up for hours… I don’t even remember what we talked about. Math, probably.” Five shrugged. “I had conversations like that with Dolores, after. Or sometimes you.”

“Me?”

He smoothed out the fabric of his shorts. “Yeah, you were there in the apocalypse with me. I had your book, remember? Closest I could get to someone talking to me.”

Vanya tried to meet his eyes, but he was gone somewhere. A gentle hand found his arm. He flinched a little, but didn’t pull away. “I’m here now.”

He nodded, and when he spoke, it sounded strangled somehow. “Thanks.”

A passing truck honked its horn. Vanya thunked her head back on a bedpost, sinking into the floaty feeling that had settled right around her sternum. She got why Klaus did this. It felt like she could say anything, or do anything, and everything would be okay.

Five made a kind of whining noise in the back of his throat. “I want donuts.”

Vanya closed her eyes, smiling. “Shit, donuts sound great right now.”

“The jelly-filled ones from Griddy’s.”

“Yeah, when you get there at like eight p.m. and they’ve just finished the last batch of the day so they’re, like, fresh and shit.”

“Fuck,” Five sighed, pulling the back of his blazer over his head and slouching. “I want donuts.”

Despite herself, Vanya started giggling again. “You look ridiculous.”

“Excuse you,” Five replied, wrinkling his nose. “I am a trained assassin of the Commission, licensed to travel space and time with an assault rifle. I never look ridiculous.”

“You look like a Founding Father.”

The look that Five shot Vanya sent chills running down her spine. But like, in a fun way.

“Take that back.”

“No.”

“You _asshole,_ take it –”

“ _No_ , you look like Benjamin goddamn Frank – hey!” Before she could so much as blink, Five had pounced, swatting at her arms when she laughingly brought them up to protect herself. “Go away, you know I’m right!”

Five was grinning too, slipping his fingers past her weak defenses to mess up her hair and poke at her cheeks until she had to hold her stomach in laughter. “Take it _back,_ I said!” he crowed, sounding like he was on the edge of laughter himself. He managed a lucky strike when blunt fingernails skated over the crease of her neck, and she scrunched her shoulder with a squeal.

“No – no, _fuck_ , Five –”

Vanya’s flailing hands struggled to gain any sort of advantage against Five’s skilled assassin reflexes, to no avail. She was horribly ticklish at the best of times, but now the ruthless pokes that were attacking her nerves overwhelmed her, and she curled up into a ball of giggles on the floor.

Through wet lashes she could see Five’s grin as he methodically took her apart, relentlessly tickling all the places he _knew_ were torture – ears down to collarbone, and then jumping down to squeeze at her sides, making her shriek. His skinny teenage fingers were unfortunately perfect for tickling at her ribs and sneaking their way into the crease of her neck.

Vanya was laughing the hardest she’d laughed in a long time, maybe ever. Nobody in recent memory had _known_ her like this, known her well enough to completely eviscerate her the way that Five always, _always_ could. Damn him. This was definitely cheating.

Her laughter hit a fever pitch when Five got a hold of one of her kicking feet. _Shit._

“ _Please_ , I – fuck! Okay, okay, I take it _back,_ mercy!”

Five stopped, smirking. “Assassins don’t show mercy, except to ticklish sisters.”

A few residual giggles escaped through Vanya’s nose. “Shut up.”

“Me, shut up? _Me?_ Excuse you, you called me a fucking _Founding Father –”_

“I didn’t say you _were_ a Founding Father, I said you _looked –”_

“Vanya, I don’t think you understand that I am _still holding on to your ankle_ , and strategically – _hey_!”

Swiftly, Vanya scooped up his own ankle and held it in her lap, a mischievous smirk on her face. She had completely forgotten about Five’s thing with unanticipated touch, but his eyes were just as bright as hers. “Oh yeah?”

Five’s smirk didn’t waver. “Nice try, I’m not ticklish.”

“Is that so?” She tugged on his leg, tucking it under her arm and hovering her fingertips over his knee. Five nearly choked.

“Wait –”

A squeeze was all it took for Five to collapse into hysterical laughter, squirming and flailing, but more squeezes couldn’t hurt. Vanya was grinning, digging in mercilessly. Served him right for attacking her, he wasn’t not the only one who remembers ticklish spots. It occurred to her that she was maybe being a little cruel, going right for his weakness immediately, but the loud, bright cackles pouring out of her brother’s mouth were worth every kick that he landed.

Five pounded a fist on the floor, mouthing something resembling words, but he couldn’t manage anything coherent through his helpless laughter. All right then, mercy it is. She graciously released his leg, which shot up into his body as he curled in on himself.

“F-fuck you,” he panted.

Vanya chuckled. “Oh come on, surely assassins are familiar with the concept of revenge?”

He said nothing, but his smile, weak from tickles, widened. She wrinkled her brow. “What’s that for?”

“S’nothing. _Hic._ ”

“Are you… are those hiccups?”

“No.” _Hic._ “…Fuck off.”

Vanya burst into another fit of laughter, earning her a light shove. Five tried to school his face into an angry expression, but he was laughing too.

“I take back everything I said, I didn’t miss you, I don’t love you, you’re an asshole –”

She giggled and shoved him back. “ _You’re_ an asshole, but we love you anyway.”

The faux-anger melted away. “I know.”

For a long moment, a comfortable silence fell over the siblings, the kind that they used to fall into around four in the morning when they had both squeezed onto Five’s bed for the night to talk about training and music and math and family.

Five yawned despite himself. “M’fuckin’ sleepy,” he grumbled.

Vanya smiled. “You sound like a kid.”

“I look like one, too,” he said, and at first Vanya thought he might be angry. He usually was when he talked about his body. But then he smiled again. He kept doing that. His eyes were shining. “I’m sorry it took me so long. The calculation took years.”

Vanya shifted to face him. “Talk to me about it.”

Five’s smile grew, and Vanya knew, somewhere in her chest, that they would be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: spritewrites


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